On Saturday, two recent VFS Film Production grads, Angela Buhr and Mohamed Soliman, begin a journey to Northern Uganda. There, they’ll be helping to document a six-week peace and community-building project by Opportunitas Aequa, a not-for-profit organization helping to rebuild war-ravaged communities for children and youth through the unifying power of soccer.

Supported and sponsored by VFS, Angela and Mohamed will land in Gulu, an area particularly hard-hit by 21 years of civil war and strife. They’ll be turning the cameras on the project’s progress for an online video series on OA’s YouTube channel. OA is working with local partner the Youth Coalition for Peace on the multi-phased project’s many initiatives, which include reconstructing a soccer field, running week-long soccer camps for young Ugandans, and training local coaches.

Mohamed, who was born in Egypt, worked for four years as an engineer before coming to VFS. Angela has several years as a business manager for Dior Cosmetics under her belt. They left those careers behind to become filmmakers and to make a difference in the world, so Project Uganda marks a kind of culmination of their own journeys.

With only a couple of weeks between being invited and their departure, it’s been a whirlwind of preparation, but we managed to catch up with Mohamed and Angela in the middle of it all.

How did you come to be involved in Project Uganda and OA?

Angela: (To Mohamed) Cari called you one day…

Mohamed: Yeah.

Angela: And said, “There’s a project in Uganda, and we need two filmmakers. Do you want to go?” “Yeah, we want to go!” And we met with her the next day. We met Gavin, the head of OA, and we met with [VFS President] James [Griffin], and they told us what the deal was – that we were going to go there for about a month, and this is what they wanted us to film, and if we wanted to go, we could go. And we were just, like, “Yeah, let’s do it!”

Mohamed: And then came the part of actually dealing with all the preproduction things. You know, what kind of gear we want, getting all the vaccinations, shots and stuff.

So, you’re leaving soon. What are you hoping, specifically, to bring to this project and OA?

Angela: I think we just want to make something creative. We just want to go out there and source out all the personal stories that they’re trying to tell. Rather than just having something that looks really cool, we want to actually tell a lot of different stories that link together.

How do you feel, now that you’re about to get going?

Mohamed: I think there’s two parts to it. The first part is really trying to get organized and taking care of all the logistics. And then, whenever you feel that things are getting a little stressed out, you just look back and see what all this is for, and as soon as you realize what all this is for, you know what? It’s fine.

Angela: It’s awesome.

Mohamed: No matter what amount of stress.

Angela: This is what we came to film school to do, is exactly this kind of thing – be a documentary filmmaker, for a good cause. I don’t think we’ve had a chance to really absorb that we’re actually going to Uganda for a month.

Mohamed: I think it’ll sink in once we’re actually in the airport. “Okay, we’re going to Uganda now.” We feel lucky that we got that chance to actually go there.

Thanks, guys, and good luck! We can’t wait to hear all about it!

Interested in getting involved in OA? You can support this cause by donating, volunteering, fundraising, or buying a ‘1 for 1’ t-shirt at oaprojects.org.

Stay tuned – we’ll be hearing plenty from the project over the coming weeks!